1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a mooring system and supporting devices to convert ocean current energy to electricity.
2. Description of Related Art
The use of kinetic energy in water flow has been known for many years in human history. The physical principle is simple and it is easy to construct a machine to tap the river flow energy. Ancient people used flow in river to do work for them with a water wheel. There has been, however, little advance in using ocean current energy although various ideas were known since the discovery of strong current such as the Gulf Stream. One critical difficulty is the fact that ocean currents change with time in location, depth and speed. Many patented designs, such as in Haining (U.S. Pat. No. 5,440,176) and Geary, (U.S. Pat. No. 6,006,518) are anchored devices on the seafloor at a fixed location. Mouton (U.S. Pat. No. 4,219,303) and Jennings and Martin (U.S. Pat. No. 7,470,086) patented floating submarine turbines that are also anchored on the ocean floor by cables. None of the patented inventions can intelligently seek and remain in the peak velocity region of ocean currents. The present invention has a built-in intelligence to overcome the critical difficulty to achieve an optimal efficiency to convert current energy to electricity.